In 2011, Graham Donaldson published his Teaching Scotland’s Future (TSF) report on teacher education and professional development, from initial teacher education (ITE) through to experienced headteacher development. In 2012, the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS) published its new Professional Standards. Both have since underpinned professional development in Scottish education. A good question to ask, as we approach the new school session, is what difference have they made?
The picture is mixed. Lots has happened since their publication. Certainly, ITE has seen big changes with the replacement of the Bachelor of Education (BEd) and adoption of courses at master’s level by universities, many of which have been innovative, not just rebranding the BEd.
The University of Edinburgh, for instance, has introduced a “primary education with” master’s-level course, in which participants study in a particular area, alongside education, for two years. They then have to decide whether they will follow their specialist area of study or continue with further education studies. If they choose the latter option, they will have an almost full-time placement in schools for their third year.
Another key TSF recommendation was the development of a college for educational leadership. This was initially envisioned as a “virtual” entity, but we now have an actual Scottish College for Educational Leadership (Scel), which is doing tremendous work in developing leadership at all levels of Scottish education; we will, though, have to see how it will be affected following the recent announcement - as part of education governance reforms - that it will be become part of Education Scotland.
At first, Scel focused on senior and experienced leadership in schools, and introduced its fellowship programme to meet the continuing developmental needs of such leaders, as recommended by Donaldson. It was soon recognised that leadership at all levels needed to be supported and programmes for new headteachers, middle leaders and teacher leadership have followed, along with frameworks to structure and support their professional development. The new Excellence in Headship programme and the Into Headship qualification, delivered with universities, have emerged out of the TSF report and Scottish Government policy aimed at improving leadership throughout education.
The three Professional Standards introduced by the GTCS have supported registration and professional development since their publication. There is a Standard for Registration, Standard for Career-Long Professional Learning and Standards for Leadership and Management. All of these set minimum standards for registration as a teacher in Scotland, but also a professional-development pathway.
In the past couple of years, these have been linked to Professional Update, which is a five-year audit of teacher professional development and impact over that time, in which teachers demonstrate and reflect on their progress and - importantly for their learners - how this has affected their practice. A process of reviewing the standards is now underway; for all the progress they have brought about, they are probably still not being used entirely as originally envisioned.
Donaldson, GTCS standards and Scel frameworks all recognise, and require, teachers and leaders to become “enquiring professionals”. This is a move on from simply being “reflective” practitioners, and recognises that the importance of reflections is in what you then do with them. GTCS, in particular, but also Scel, is supporting the adoption of practitioner-enquiry approaches.
The two schools that I led before my retirement began a journey with practitioner enquiry in 2009 and I have been a strong advocate of the approach. That is not to deny that there are other ways that teachers can start to become enquiring; other approaches include collaborative enquiry, lesson study, appreciative enquiry, action research and teacher-learning communities. But if we really do want to develop a self-improving system, we need self-improving teachers, and I think it is through practitioner enquiry that we can ultimately achieve that aim.
The focus is on developing every teacher so that they achieve what Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan Lytle have identified as “inquiry as stance”. This is when the systematic, and informed, enquiry into their effect on learning is understood and embedded in everything they do. To achieve that requires every teacher to examine their impact on learning throughout their career, to keep developing, “not because we are not good enough, but because we can be even better”, as Dylan Wiliam stated recently.
What Helen Timperley, Cochran-Smith and Lytle, and many others, have also shown is that the adoption of enquiry approaches to professional development has a positive effect for all learners and can support us in narrowing gaps that exist in most systems. Attainment and achievement rise as teachers better understand their effect on learning and how to develop this. The attitudes, dispositions and school cultures that teachers develop through practitioner enquiry not only develop them individually, they also support collaborative school improvement, and ultimately system development.
I am not advocating that all teachers and school leaders immediately embrace practitioner enquiry. What I am saying, though, is that if we want to truly make a difference for all our learners, then this is a journey that we should all be on.
George Gilchrist is a recently retired primary teacher and a fellow of the Scottish College for Educational Leadership
